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by garbygal
Summary: Ryan's been acting strange...and there's no explaination why. Can the others figure out what is wrong before he destroy's Division.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Ryan breathed a huge sigh of relief. With everything that had been going down lately with Danforth trying to kill Division, he was relieved to have worked out a deal with the President to keep Division safe for now. It was a huge victory for them- no more secret missions- just catching the rest of the Dirty Thirty and then they would all be pardoned and counted among the living again. It was exactly what everyone in Division wanted- even if the President did compromise a little.

Going back to Division and presenting the President's agreement would definitely lighten up Division and give the agents something to look forward to. Ryan excitedly started towards his SUV after leaving the secret tunnel he was required to travel through a few blocks from the White House. When he felt a mosquito bite his neck, he just slapped it and kept on his way.

As he got just around the corner from his SUV, Ryan began to feel suddenly tired. He kept walking, but it began to feel like walking through mud. He fell to his knees knowing something was wrong. He looked up, hallucinating that Roan, who had long been dead, was standing in front of him. "But you're dead."

Meanwhile Birkhoff and Nikita anxiously waited for Ryan to return. His mission was an important and everyone was anxious to see what his results would be. It would be life or death to them so whatever he worked out would change Division in one way or another. He had been gone a few hours and that made Nikita nervous. She figured it may be obvious they had gone bad since they were taking so long. At least that's the way it seemed to her. "Ryan's back." Birkhoff reported, pointing to a security camera showing Ryan's SUV pulling into the garage.

"Thank God." Nikita replied, immediately setting off towards the garage.

Ryan climbed out of the SUV and shut the door, rubbing his head gingerly. He had no idea what he had done, he just got into his SUV after leaving the tunnel and drove back to Division, but he didn't remember hitting his head. After locking the car, he walked towards Operations, only to run into Birkhoff and Nikita. "How did it go?" Nikita asked.

"Great!" Ryan replied. "The president agreed to allow us to go on without any more side missions."

"That's fantastic!" Nikita replied, Birkhoff agreeing with a huge grin.

"You alright." Birkhoff noticed Ryan rubbing his head.

"Yeah." Ryan nodded. "I must of bumped my head a little."

"Gotta be more careful." Birkhoff laughed with him.

"I'll be in my office." Ryan explained.

They all headed opposite directions, Ryan heading to his office. He sat down at the desk and opened a locked drawer. Opening the drawer's folders, he pulled out a bunch of paperwork. It was a pile of documents. Documents that had been hidden away since Percy had died. Until now, Ryan had no desire to even look at them. Something had changed. Ryan couldn't put a finger on what it was, but he brushed it off and opened the first folder.

The documents were all about finding opportunities. People Percy could talk to in order to find additional funding by doing side missions. The documents were still on paper, as apparently Percy didn't even want Birkhoff to know about them through the computer system. Ryan flipped through the documents, but he hadn't heard of any of the people on the list, which surprised him. Since he had previously been with the CIA, it surprised him that he hadn't heard of them. The CIA didn't even know that they were out there.

Rubbing his head again, Ryan didn't know why he was looking at them. Shoving them back in the drawer and locking it, Ryan couldn't believe he had been looking at them in the first place. A knock on his door and Ryan looked up. "Michael." He greeted him.

"Nikita told me your trip went well." He replied, walking in.

"Yes." Ryan replied. "The president agreed. WE clean up our mess and then we go free. The only downside is we have the funding we have and that's it."

"Hopefully we can get around that." Michael agreed. "For the rest of it that's a pretty good deal."

"Of course we have to keep our noses clean. The President's agreement is that as long as it doesn't come out on the news or as long as it can be explained through a cover up, we are fine. If any direct attention is called to Division, the agreement is null and void."

"Of course." Michael nodded in understanding, Seems fair."

"I'm just glad to get that burden off our backs." Ryan stretched.

"It'll make things a little bit easier, I think." Michael agreed. "So what is our next move?"

"We go back to the Dirty Thirty." Ryan replied.

"Do we have any leads?" Michael sat down and leaned back in the chair.

"Nothing lately." Ryan replied, "We have been focusing on the side missions and things. Birkhoff and the tech analysts have not had much of a chance to look for them."  
Michael nodded in understanding. "Makes sense. Do you want me to get Birkhoff on that?"

"Yes." Ryan replied.

"Anything else?" Michael stood up, about to leave.

Ryan thought for a minute. "Nothing else for now. I'm going to worry about how to keep our finances up."

Michael chuckled and replied, "I don't envy that job. I think it may have been what drove Percy over the edge."

_You have no idea_. Ryan thought, then immediately questioned where the thought had come from. Brushing it off, he replied, "Thanks."

Ryan pulled up his computer to pull up budget records. Division would be in trouble if he didn't come up with something quick. There was not a legal way for him to get the funds they would need since the President had cut off their funding. A headache began to form in his temples. He started researching for ways to find money but he came up empty. The headache began to pound and he glanced down at the locked drawer. He could suddenly understand why Percy had gone to the dark side. It was so much easier to deal with a little side mission rather than try to get the money elsewhere.

Ryan knew it was wrong, but it was so tempting to take the easy way out. He was fighting himself internally- do the right thing or make it easy but do it wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Ryan didn't know exactly how he was going to explain it to the others. It was not going to be a popular decision but he had to get the financing somewhere. He walked the halls quickly, dress shoes clicking on the floor. Part way down the hall, he finally got to the office they had designated as Michael's. Knocking, Michael quickly answered, "Come in."

Taking a deep breath, Ryan ran over his cover story once more in his head before walking into Michael's office. "Hey Michael. Can I talk to you?"

Putting his pen down and looking up at Ryan, Michael smiled and replied, "Hey Ryan, yeah."

Ryan sat down in a chair across from Michael. "I just talked to the President. He has a mission he is requiring us to do."

Rolling his eyes, Michael replied, "That's great. What are we talking about?"

"A mission to London." Ryan explained. "There is an organization that has been fronting weapons to Ryan Cabers, one of the dirty thirty. We need to infiltrate them, find Ryan and capture or kill him."

Michael raised an eyebrow. Normally Ryan would not suggest murder, but Michael just took it as stress-slip of the tongue. Only Ryan knew the true goal of the mission- to kill the weapons group. He was right. It was a little surprising that he was being so deceptive to the others, but he just kept justifying it as the only option to get the funding they needed. Michael distracted him by asking, "Why does the government care about sending us on a dirty thirty mission."

Shrugging, Ryan replied, "I'm not sure."

Again Michael shrugged. "Well, we will have to discuss it with the others but it is a pretty cut and dry. Shouldn't be an issue."

"Thanks for listening." Ryan stood up and headed back to his office.

Working on paperwork, Ryan opened the binder of Percy's information. The first page was titled, "Operation Weapons Cache." Word-by-word it described the plan that Ryan had just put into place. As he read through it to make sure he had his plan straight, the door opened suddenly and Ryan threw the binder under his desk. He looked up to see Birkhoff, eyeing him curiously, then saying, "I hear you have orders from the President. As there anything, any prep you need me to do?" Birkhoff questioned.

"Just the customary prep work. Get our eyes in the skies." Ryan told him, then looked down to sign some of his paperwork.

Why are you acting so casual about this?" Birkhoff suddenly questioned him.

"I'm not." Ryan looked up to Birkhoff in reply. "I'm doing what I have to for Division to keep us doing what we need to be doing to eventually get our lives back."

"But openly accepting we may need to kill someone? Even Mikey was concerned. You've never been so cavalier to just allow it, to not create a contingency plan?"

Ryan began to panic. Was Birkhoff going to accuse him of something? "You know Birkhoff, sometimes I don't have time to arrange contingencies for everything. Besides, he's a dirty thirty agent- does his life really matter all that much to us"

His mouth opened in shock, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Ryan, what is going on? Did you hit your head? You're starting to act like Percy."

Immediately Ryan snapped back to attention realizing he could not let Birkhoff think something was wrong. "I'm sorry." He immediately apologized. "I've been under a lot of stress from the President's orders. Of course I don't want to kill the agent, of course I want to rescue him, bring him to justice."

It looked like Birkhoff mostly believed his explanation, but he did still have a confused look on his face. Ryan knew he would have to be careful. "Alright, well, I'll get on that stuff you wanted."

Ryan nodded and went back to his desk work while Birkhoff left the room. As he shut the door behind himself, Birkhoff paused. He couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong, but something was wrong- Ryan was acting strange. His stories weren't adding up. First, Ryan told them that the president had cut off their funding, now they were doing a job for the president for money. It just didn't strike Birkhoff as right- and his gut told him something was very wrong. "Hey Nerd." Birkhoff looked up to see Nikita approaching. "What's going on?"

Scratching his head, Birkhoff replied, "I'm not quite sure. Come on, let's go talk to Michael."

"O-kay." Nikita replied, following Birkhoff towards Michael's office.

Knocking gently, Birkhoff and Nikita walked in, Birkhoff shutting the door behind them. "Hey." Michael smiled in greeting to Nikita, giving her a hug and a kiss. So what's going on"

"I think there's something wrong with Ryan." Birkhoff reported. "He's acting strange."

"How so?" Michael asked.

"Like you said- he seemed awful caviler about murder. Plus he told us the President said they weren't going to pay us- and now we are suddenly doing jobs for them for pay." Birkhoff said.

"That's true." Nikita agreed it was kind of off.

"He says it was just stress, put it is like his entire personality has changed. I'm just worried if we don't deal with him, we could end up with another Percy on our hands." Birkhoff replied.

"Come on." Nikita interjected. "This is Ryan we are talking about. There's no way he would get to that level."

"it's like something happened." Michael agreed with Birkhoff. "He is acting really strange. There has to be something going on."

"Have you asked him?" Nikita asked, causing Birkhoff o roll his eyes and Michael to grimace.

"yes." Michael replied, "Remember? He told it was stress."

"but he's been here the whole time. No one has had any access to him. How could this have happened? His mind couldn't have just snapped, could it?" Nikita asked.

"I don't know." Michael rubbed the back of his head. "How does any of this stuff happen?"

"So how do we handle this What do we do?" Birkhoff questioned.

"For now, just keep an eye on him. He isn't about to admit what is going on, even if he actually knew." Nikita pointed out. "Then, we research. We track Ryan's last days and see if anything strange has happened to him- if there's any time we can't account for."

"I don't know we would find anything out that way." Michael replied, "We don't have video of him every moment of every day."

"I can cross reference his tracker and see if anything suspicious comes up."

"Do it." Michael agreed. "We'll start there. In the meanwhile we all keep a very close eye on Ryan. There is something strange and even if it is just stress, we have to be able to prevent him from doing anything that will put other recruits in harm's way or go against what we promised when we kept Division open.

"I will see what I can find." Birkhoff headed off to his office.

"So?" she asked him as he walked back into their compound.

"It's done." He replied. "Exactly what we wanted."

She rubbed her hands together, smiling in excitement. They'll never know what hit them."

"I took care of the surveillance too. At best they will see that video is missing but not what happened."

A smiled creped across her face. They will have no idea what hit them."

He nodded in agreement. "I agree it will take them a long time to find the injection much less then know what did after I knocked him out. This is not something they would ever suspect in a hundred years."

With a laugh she added, even if they somehow figured it out, it will take them even longer to figure out how to fix it- if they can."

"this time they are going down." H answered in approval. "And there's nothing they can do about us taking back over."

"Division will be ours again." She laughed, brushing her hair over her shoulder.


End file.
